α-Fluoroaldehydes can be produced by reduction of corresponding α-fluoroesters. For such reduction reactions, it is often the case to use stoichiometric amounts of hydride reducing agents e.g. sodium borohydride, lithium aluminum hydride etc. (see Patent Document 1 and Non-Patent Document 1). However, the processes for production of α-fluoroaldehydes using the stoichiometric amounts of hydride reducing agents are not suitable for large-scale production applications in view of the facts that: the hydride reducing agents are expensive and need to be handled with great caution; and the post treatments of the resulting reaction products require complicated operations and cause large amounts of wastes.
On the other hand, there have been proposed, as relevant techniques, process for production of fluoral hydrates by reaction of trifluoroacetic acids (including corresponding esters) with hydrogen gas (H2) in the presence of ruthenium/tin bimetal catalysts in vapor phases (see Patent Documents 2 and 3).